


tangle

by orphan_account



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Frottage, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, PWP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:28:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20686004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In his apartment in Antwerp, when Boris wakes to a still-sleeping Theo wrapped tightly around him, it’s with a pang of familiarity that pierces Boris’ heart like a knife.





	tangle

Boris still remembers—all those years ago, in Vegas, the nights he spent hip-to-hip in bed with Theo, both slouched lazily against the wall at their backs and each other as they drank and smoked and watched old films on the t.v. Films that, honestly, they often wouldn’t entirely remember having watched the next day. There were a lot of things that Theo, what with his black-out drinking, didn’t remember about back then. For Boris there were certain things that he couldn’t entirely remember as well—hazy, dream-like memories that he couldn’t be sure were memories at all, but just that: dreams.

He does remember the times he would wake in the night to Theo crying out in his sleep, those nightmares, after which Boris would pull him close and attempt to lull him back to sleep—_It’s only me_—and they would lay close enough for Boris to feel Theo’s racing heartbeat through his chest, quietly hushing and running his hand across Theo’s arm, his back, as he waited for it to calm.

Boris also remembers the times he would awaken late at night not to another of Theo’s nightmares, but for whatever other unknown reason. Awakening to himself and Theo clutching each other, having closely interlocked in their sleep, snapped together like puzzle pieces and sweaty from the proximity. Listening to the Nevada wind blow dust against the side of the house, feeling Theo’s slow, sleeping heartbeat.

Now, in his apartment in Antwerp, when Boris wakes to a still-sleeping Theo wrapped tightly around him, it’s with a pang of familiarity that pierces Boris’ heart like a knife.

It’s still dark out—the television, still playing but muted, casts shifting lights across the walls. Boris, so intertwined with Theo’s dead weight, cannot lift his head enough to see what is currently playing. Now that he is awake, the awareness of the different points in which he and Theo are pressed against one another has Boris swallowing thickly. Theo’s face pressed tightly to Boris’ neck, the angle forcing Boris’ chin upward to rest on Theo’s hair, neck force-extended as hot, sleep-slow breaths are exhaled against his quickening pulse; Theo’s hand pressed against the bare skin of Boris’ back, between his shoulder blades, the fabric of Boris’ shirt rumpled from how Theo’s arm has somehow wormed its way up and under it in the night; and at some point, they must have removed their pants to sleep, because their bare skin also touches where Boris must have unconsciously hiked his leg up over Theo’s hip, legs as interlocked as their arms. And, Boris quickly realizes, half-hard, Theo’s leg rests between his own, pressing up against his cock.

_Quite the predicament,_ Boris thinks deliriously, mind feeling sleep-slow and far off despite his current position. He lays for a while staring tensely at the changing lights on the wall, hyper-aware of his arousal and all the ways in which he and Theo are touching, daring not to move, before he finally ventures to lightly run a hand up Theo’s back and whisper, “Potter.”

No response, except for the slight shifting of Theo’s head, hair tickling Boris’ chin. After a somewhat shaky inhale, Boris tries again, slightly louder, “Potter!”

At that Theo stirs, breathing in deeply. His face shifts further against Boris’ neck, lips pressing and tongue darting out to run wetly against skin in a movement so unexpected that it makes Boris’ breath stutter; and, Theo clutching Boris tighter in his half-awake state, a sharp gasp of a moan is forced out of Boris’ mouth as Theo’s leg grinds upward.

At the sound, Theo suddenly freezes, body tense. They both lay frozen, Boris breathing hard and Theo not seeming to breathe at all, before Theo slowly unravels himself enough to look up into Boris’ flushed face. 

It is too dark to properly see, but Theo’s face looks naked without his glasses. Back in Vegas, as children, Boris had seen Theo plenty of times without his glasses; but now, seeing his bare adult face in the dim changing light from the television, it somehow catches Boris off-guard. Familiar still is the curiously blank, unblinking expression Theo wears now, the same as when they were kids stealing entire packages of steak from the supermarket (easy), or trying to play it cool in front of Xandra while high as kites off of pills nabbed from her stash (not so easy). The lack of light and awkward angle make it difficult to read Theo’s eyes—and the longer they stare at each other, not speaking, wrapped up together like a pretzel and with Boris’ hard-on pressed against their bodies, well. The closer to hysterical laughter Boris feels.

Theo’s glasses. Boris wonders, absurdly, whether Theo had placed them on the side-table beside the overfull ashtray before sleep, or if they had slipped off into the folds of Boris’ now-tangled sheets to inevitably be rolled over onto and crushed. 

Automatically Boris’ hand reaches up to touch the side of Theo’s face, fingertips where the glasses would rest against his temple. Boris wets his lips in preparation to say—he doesn’t know what—stupidly, _Where the hell are your glasses?_ or an attempt at a joke, _Hah, try not to knee me in the balls in your sleep, please?_ Boris doesn’t get that far, though, because Theo chooses then to dart forward and roughly press his lips against Boris’ own.

The next thing Boris knows his hand has moved from Theo’s temple to frantically grabbing a fistful of hair near the base of Theo’s neck, tugging his head forward to kiss him more deeply. Theo moans against Boris’ open mouth, which Boris echoes back; Theo must have bashed his teeth against Boris’ lip when he first kissed him, or Boris bit Theo’s lip, he doesn’t know, but Boris tastes the metallic tang of blood alongside the lingering sourness of the alcohol they had drunk and cheap take-out they had eaten earlier that night.

Intertwined as they were, they had been laying on their sides—but now Theo rolls them so that Boris is fully on his back, the hand that had once rested between Boris’ shoulder blades skating down his ribs to clumsily tug Boris’ underwear down past his thighs. Boris shivers as his now-leaking cock is exposed to the air, attempts to spread his legs further obstructed by the fabric now trapping his thighs together. While Boris struggles to maneuver his underwear the rest of the way off of one leg—his upper body being pinned against the mattress by Theo’s own, and the fact of Theo determinedly working a hickey into the junction between Boris’ jaw and neck proving to make this more difficult than it otherwise would be—Theo must have done away with his own underwear, because his next grind downward has Boris gasping at the mind-numbing feeling of Theo’s swollen member dragging against Boris’ own. Ears ringing, Boris feels more than hears Theo’s groan against the abused skin of his neck. With legs finally free, Boris wraps them tightly around Theo’s hips, digging his heels into the back of Theo’s thighs and rocking upward with every grinding motion.

One fist still in a death-grip in Theo’s hair, Boris cries out as he flings his other arm above him to brace himself against the headboard, their increasingly violent rocking having shifted his body gradually up the mattress and perilously close to knocking his head. The shitty bed itself is shifting, thumping against the wall in time to their ragged exhales and moans, and it’s as Theo is dragging his teeth against Boris’ throat that Boris’ vision whites out.

Theo bites out a stuttering moan soon after, the heat of his release mixing with Boris’ own on his stomach. Limbs still tightly wound around one another, Theo shifts to collapse half-onto Boris’ body, open mouth pressed into the crook of Boris’ shoulder, ragged breaths near Boris’ ear.

Laying there in their mutual cooling sweat, Theo lightly runs a hand through the mess on Boris’ stomach and finally says something. Or rather, uncertainly mumbles. “Um. How is your shower?”

Still out of breath, Boris exhales something like the weary cousin of a laugh. “Want to try it out? I’ll show you.”

**Author's Note:**

> this is entirely without substance... I have not written fanfic in 80 years...... yet here we are :-)


End file.
